


Lightning Strikes Once

by steggyisimmortal



Category: Agent Carter (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Steggy Week 2020, shout out to my boy Erskine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25523443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steggyisimmortal/pseuds/steggyisimmortal
Summary: Peggy travels to a base in New Mexico after reports come in of a strange lightning storm.  It could be a wild goose chase or it could be something other worldly.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 5
Kudos: 64





	Lightning Strikes Once

**Author's Note:**

> After watching Endgame once, I realized Peggy mentions something about something not being lightning strikes. Then after watching Thor, one of his friends mentions Thor likes to go down to earth to summon lightning and thunder every now and then to make mortals worship him. And thus, now we have this fic.
> 
> When Peggy met Thor. 
> 
> Written for Day 7 of Steggy Week 2020. It's Steggy if you squint.

* * *

[2023]

Steve scrubbed his hands over his face. 

The whole crew was finally back together, plus a few stragglers. 

He’d been nervous to have everyone in one place again but it was going okay so far. Their personalities didn’t always mesh but in the heat of the battle, they always managed to pull together. 

Time travel. 

If someone had told him in 1943 that when he signed up to be a guinea pig for the SSR, 81 years in the future he would be traveling through time to save half of humanity that had vanished into thin air five years prior….

Steve was pretty sure he would have just gone dancing with Bucky and the girls instead. 

He sighed. 

It had to work tomorrow. They couldn’t lose again. He didn’t think he could handle it. 

He reached into his pocket to pull out his compass. Flipping it open, he was met with Peggy’s eyes.

He tried not to pull it out when the others were around. He didn’t want to answer questions and listen to their teasing. He already got enough of that from Natasha when she was in a playful mood. 

He always looked to Peggy when he needed guidance. Even if he thought he was doing the right thing, he would always wonder what Peggy would do in the situation. He doubted this was a situation she ever would have envisioned. 

His body jerked forward when a hand slapped him on the back. He fumbled with the compass, almost dropping it, before catching it in his other hand. 

“Ah! Director Carter!” Thor said. “She has a mighty swing, that one. How do you know her?”

Steve whipped around to stare at him. 

“How do _you_ know her?” Steve narrowed his eyes. 

Thor smiled fondly. It was one of the few times Steve had seen him genuinely smile since Banner had brought him to the compound. 

“It’s a funny story actually. It was quite some time ago. You see, I had just come down to earth again to mess with the mortals. It was somewhat of a hobby of mine…”

* * *

[Location: **REDACTED** ] [Date: **REDACTED** ]

“What exactly do you mean?” Peggy asked the agents in the control room. 

The two men stared at her with bewildered looks on their faces. Whether it was because of the events that had transpired or the fact that the director of the organization had flown all the way to New Mexico for a lightning storm, she couldn’t tell.

Maybe it was because they’d just found out the director was a woman.

“I mean, it just started going haywire. Equipment was malfunctioning and then a huge electrical storm just appeared out of nowhere. The planes had to bail out. Anytime they come within ten miles of the area, their controls stop working. None of our tech will work but we can’t figure out why.”

“And Howard didn’t think to stay?” she wondered.

The agent shrugged and looked at the other man sitting in front of the monitors. 

“He said it was just an energy surge and that he’d be back Monday.”

Sometimes it astonished her how much she wanted to strangle Howard in a given month. 

Maybe she was being too harsh on the man. He was only a contractor, after all. He treated SHIELD as a playground sometimes. In retrospect, she never should have let him take the Tesseract to the desert by himself. 

“Show me the footage,” she requested.

The man in the chair turned around and rewound the tape to the beginning.

Howard had been working on some new weapons using the Tesseract. He’d assured her they would only be used to stun an individual. She hadn’t even wanted him to use it for that but she’d let him persuade her.

Her first mistake.

She made a note to have a talk with Mr. Jarvis about Howard when she returned home. They were clearly failing in their babysitting duties. 

“This is when we did the tests yesterday afternoon,” one of the agents said.

“Did you have any issues then?” she asked.

“No, everything was fine.”

“Show me when the problems started.”

“Well, that’s just it,” the agent in the chair turned to say. “The tape is all messed up because of all the problems.”

She fixed the man with a hard stare. Chastised, he turned and scrolled through the video footage without a word. 

The video started normal enough. It was security footage for the base, which meant a whole lot of nothing since it was a nuclear testing site and there wasn’t another living soul for 50 miles. Soon enough the aforementioned lightning storm rolled in and the video started skipping. Even through the video footage, Peggy had to shield her eyes from the brightness. Surely that couldn’t be natural. Someone had to be having them on. 

A motion to the left of the screen gave her pause. 

“Stop. Go back.”

The agent rewound the footage until Peggy put a hand on his shoulder. She leaned closer, practically on top of the man, to get a better look.

There it was! That burst of light across the empty expanse was hiding it but she was sure she had seen... 

“Go back one more time.”

The agent did as commanded. She leaned closer still.

Peggy’s eyes went wide.

“Impossible,” she mumbled. 

She darted for the door.

“Wait!”

“Director! Where are you going?!”

But she had no time to answer them. She rushed out of the room and hurried for one of the Jeeps. 

* * *

Peggy looked around the area. It looked much like she’d expect a desert to look in the middle of the night.

Dark and empty because she couldn’t see a bloody thing. 

The headlights from the Jeep were her only illumination on the area. Overhead, she could still hear the low rumble of thunder. She could see lightning in the distance but it wasn’t terribly close just now. 

She sighed. 

She sincerely hoped the agents hadn’t called the east coast base to complain about an odd storm. 

But she couldn’t deny what she’d seen in the footage with her own two eyes. There had to be something she was missing.

She looked back to where she had just come from. Even though she knew lights were blazing all around the building, two miles away she couldn’t see a trace of them. She turned back to the illuminated area. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a flashlight. Turning it on, she started shining it across the ground. 

_I am not crazy. I saw something but what?_ she thought. _And where?_

She was just about to give up and go back to the Jeep when her light caught something. 

Walking a few feet in front of her, the ground changed from light to dark. She ran her shoe over it to see if it was an old tire track but it didn’t change. In fact, nothing moved. It was as if the ground had hardened that way after a rainstorm turn the dirt to mud and then the sun dried the pattern. 

Except no one had reported rain recently. Only thunder and lightning.

But there was a definite pattern on the ground. It almost appeared as though it was scorched. 

She jumped at a sudden loud crack of lightning, closing her eyes from the blinding light, and then immediately berated herself.

She clicked off her flashlight and placed it back in her pocket. Clearly she’d come out here on a wild goose chase. It was probably troublemakers sneaking their way onto the site and causing a ruckus. 

That’s when she noticed the rain that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Wonderful. Now she was stuck in the middle of the rain standing next to the as of yet unexplainable design in the dirt. 

Her forehead creased from confusion. Looking around her, she could hear the rain but it wasn’t raining on her. Her clothes were as dry as when she put them on that morning. 

She turned towards the Jeep. In the light from the headlights she could see the large drops pouring down in front of the vehicle. Her mouth gaped. 

She reached her hands out but it was habit more than anything. She knew she wouldn’t feel the drops.

She’d read the stories but she hadn’t believed them. Rainstorms out of thin air. Thunder and lightning that seemed earth shattering, like they were of another world. 

Suddenly, she felt as though she were being watched. Her breathing grew shallow as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

Before she could turn around, she felt a soft touch on the top of her shoulder. When more pressure was applied in the touch, she swung around as fast as she could until her fist connected with something hard.

A tall, blonde man staggered backwards away from her. Whatever he was holding fell to the ground with a dull thud. Peggy was cursing herself for forgetting her pistol.

“Who are you?” she demanded. Her fists were still up and ready to strike.

The man’s fingers went to the left side of his jaw. He stretched his mouth open, his eyes practically shut from the pain.

“Thor, son of Odin,” he strained. “Who are you?”

“Peggy, Director of SHIELD.”

He placed a hand to his chest and held his other palm open for her to see he meant no harm. “Forgive me. I meant no disrespect.”

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t sneak up on people in the dark.”

Peggy gave a once over to the man’s appearance. His shoulder length hair was strikingly blonde with a beard and mustache to match. He wore what appeared to be some type of body armor. From underneath the vest of armor were sleeves that looked as though they were made from scales. And she was fairly positive he was wearing a cape. 

It was not exactly one’s average desert attire. Or anywhere else for that matter. 

“Where are you from?” she asked. 

“Asgard.” Like that meant anything to Peggy. He seemed to realize this. “I am not of your realm.”

She nodded and let her eyes once again wash over his attire. 

“I gathered as much. Why are you here?”

Thor looked over her shoulder towards the base. 

“You have something here that once belonged to my father,” he explained. “A very powerful weapon.”

“And you came here because you want it back?” Her tone made it clear whatever it was, that was not happening without a fight. 

Thor shook his head. He took a step closer to her. Peggy’s chin raised in warning but he persisted another step. Her instincts were telling her this man wouldn’t harm her but she still didn’t want to let her guard down. 

Around them the rain continued to fall but still they were dry.

“No, my father left it here on Midgard because he knew it was safer here than with him. Evil searches for it outside this realm.”

So the stories were true after all. 

How could they be false with a man from another realm standing in front of her while it rained around them but they did not get wet?

Abraham had been the one to fill her head with the tales. She always figured he was pulling her leg. Their time together had been fraught with fear and panic. She figured he wanted to share stories of folklore to make the time seem less strenuous. 

He’d told her of a town in Norway that worshipped a man from another realm named Odin. They protected a very valuable and dangerous artifact that possessed unlimited energy and infinite power. 

“The Tesseract.”

He nodded, the look on his face one of surprise.

“It’s not for the eyes of ordinary men.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. 

“It’s a good thing you are a woman, then.” He chuckled and flashed her what she thought he imagined to be his most dazzling smile. 

What this man really flirting with her right now?

He wasn’t so bad on the eyes, she supposed. She shook her head to rid herself of her thoughts. 

_Don’t go turning into Howard now._

She gestured to the environment around them. “I take it you’re to blame for all the thunder and lightning.”

He smiled. “Yes, it’s kind of my thing.”

“Why are you terrorizing my agents?”

He shrugged. He was cocky, this one. 

“Sometimes I like to come down to Midgard and remind people who I am.”

She waited for him to explain but he kept smiling at her like she was supposed to know that answer. She felt the urge to wipe the smile off his face.

“And who are you exactly?” she wondered, crossing her arms. 

His smile fell away slightly before he seemed to brush his ego off. His arms flew up to indicate himself. 

“The god of thunder.”

Peggy’s eyes went wide but not from amazement. She was beginning to wonder if her gut had mislead her. Maybe this man had escaped from a mental institution. Why else would he be wearing a cape in the middle of the night and telling a stranger he was the god of thunder?

But then she could hear Abraham’s voice. “ _There is a man, a god, who is said to control thunder and lightning who protects mankind. The people revered him so much, they named Thursday after him to show their respect.”_

Thor, son of Odin. If only Abraham were here now to see that. 

The town of Odin worshippers in Norway was also said to contain the Tesseract, the same Tesseract the Red Skull searched for for years. The same Tesseract SHIELD now had in its possession and was using for energy testing. 

Howard should have left the blasted thing at the bottom of the ocean. No one would have ever known it was there.

Thor brought her back to the present, stuttering over his words before he asked, “Forgive me but by any chance, are you a Valkyrie? I’m just getting the sense…”

“Am I a what?” she asked in a sharp voice. 

He shook his hands to wave off his question. “Nothing, never mind.”

That threw her off guard. Had he just asked her if she was a prostitute? Or had it meant something else? She was fairly positive she still had some of Abraham’s old books lying around somewhere. She had some research to do when she returned home.

She turned back to the matter at hand.

“So, you came all the way to earth to give us a little lightning show? I would hardly think we’re a worthy audience for such a thing. For starters, this is a desert with next to no population.”

His face turned grim, all traces of playfulness gone.

“There is someone evil searching for the Tesseract. Heimdall has seen them. He has also been able to see the electromagnetic energy all the way from Asgard. That means Ronan can as well.”

Heimdall, Ronan. People from space and a cube of death. 

_What on earth have I gotten myself into?_ she thought.

But she had to acknowledge the dangers of the Tesseract. The weapons Hydra had created were like no other and she hoped never to see their kind again. Howard may have good intentions trying to harness energy from the cube but that didn’t mean every person around them did as well. 

No, they’d have to stop bringing the Tesseract out into the open like this. It wasn’t safe. 

“All right,” she agreed. “I’ll have it moved to a more secure location with fewer prying eyes. We’ll limit contact with it. We’ll keep it safe.”

Thor bowed slightly before her. “Thank you. I appreciate your help, Peggy, Director of SHIELD.”

He WAS flirting with her. The cheeky bastard. 

“If that settles matters, then it appears my work here is done. You have been most kind.”

He kissed the back of her hand, his touch lingering for longer than it should have. His hand was warm and sure on hers. All right, so she didn’t hate it. She was only human after all.

He took a few steps back from her. “Farewell, Peggy.”

Thor turned and began walking the short distance to the marks Peggy had been looking at earlier. She was just about to ask what he was doing when she noticed something.

“Don’t forget this.”

She picked up the object he had dropped earlier, a hammer, and held it out toward him. 

He turned his gaze away from the sky and glanced at her. His eyes went wide and his mouth opened but he didn’t say anything. 

“What?” she asked. 

His mouth snapped shut. “Hmm? Oh, it’s nothing,” he assured her. He chuckled but he seemed perturbed to her. “That hit must have gone to my head more than I realized.”

Without moving, he opened his hand and the hammer was wrenched from her grip as if of its own free will. Her mouth fell open when she saw it now firmly in his hand.

Crikey O’Reilly.

Thor laughed, a real one this time. Clearly, he was amused by her bewilderment. 

“We shall meet again one day, Peggy,” he promised. “You are a rare woman.”

Before she could ask what he meant, or deliver a quip that was sure to knock him back, he raised the hammer to the sky. At once, an ear-splitting noise pierced the air as bright colors filled her vision. She covered her eyes to protect herself. She could feel dirt and rocks hitting her legs.

And just as quickly as it started, it was gone.

The rain stopped.

Thor was nowhere in sight.

“Well,” Peggy said to the emptiness. “All right then.”

* * *

When she pulled up to the base a few minutes later, the agents were in a right state of panic.

“Director Carter! Are you okay?” The man held a phone receiver in his hand, cord and all ripped from the base in his haste to speak with her.

Her brow furrowed in confusion.

“Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

He pointed to where she had just come from. 

“That….. that thing from the sky! The light! The noise! The rain! What was that?!”

Peggy turned back to look, pondering her answer.

No one would believe her even if she told them and besides, would they be ready to hear the truth? To know that somewhere out there were beings from another planet? Not even just beings but gods. 

Her mind flashed back to just an hour ago when she had first arrived at the base to speak with the two men in attendance. Their faces had been perplexed at the woman calling herself the director of their organization, as if she had just told them she was from Mars. 

No, they weren’t ready to hear about this just yet. This would stay her secret, possibly forever.

She turned back to the men desperate for answers and shrugged. 

“Just a harmless storm, gentlemen. Let’s pack up and go home.”

* * *

[2023]

Steve sat there speechless.

“I did eventually go back some years later,” Thor was saying. “I always felt that she really understood me. Plus, she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by me. I like that in a woman. I never knew if she was going to slap me or kiss me.”

Steve whipped his head around to look at Thor.

“Metaphorically speaking, of course,” he quickly back tracked. 

Steve narrowed his eyes at his friend but he couldn’t be sure if he was lying or not. The man liked to boast a lot but that was usually when he was around Tony. They were easy targets for one another but it was all in good fun. Most of the time. 

“So, you and Director Carter?”

Thor gestured from Steve to the compass, putting two and two together. Steve glanced back at Peggy’s picture. 

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Well, kind of. We didn’t really get our chance but,” and he paused.

But what? They had been together though it might not have been conventional. She was always the one he wanted to talk to when he was having trouble with strategy. She was always there after a mission – good or bad. She was always there to help him break the rules and vice versa. She protected him, aided him, comforted him. 

They might not have been a traditional couple for those two years but the promise had always been there. With every conversation, every look, they were telling one another how they felt. 

Steve met Thor’s eyes.

“She was always the only partner for me,” he finished with a bittersweet smile. 

Thor nodded, seeming to understand everything Steve couldn’t say out loud. 

“You picked a fine woman.” He patted Steve on the back, his body once again lurching from the force. “She’s worthy.”

Steve watched Thor walk away.

_Huh, yeah, that’s one way of putting it_ , Steve nodded to himself.

Wait. Worthy?

“Shit,” he said, wonderous. He looked back at the compass with a smile. “More like ‘ _she_ who be worthy.’”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> The location in New Mexico is based on one of the testing sites they used for the Manhattan Project. It felt fitting to use it since Howard had a hand in that in the MCU.
> 
> The year is purposefully ambiguous once I realized my original idea and year would not pan out so the reader can fill in a time frame that suits them. 
> 
> Ronan is the enemy because why not? Honestly all the bad guys are intertwined so it could be a thing. 
> 
> As always, all flaws are where they're supposed to be.


End file.
